Biomaterials
as well as their applications as artificial organs are widely
recognized as an emerging area for material scientists,
biotechnologists, chemists, engineers and medical professionals.
Recent developments in the areas of material science and
biological science have enabled an impressive progress in our
attempts to develop new biomaterials. The progress in
biomaterials research clearly requires an improved understanding
in multiple disciplines as well as the development of new design
methodologies or utilization of novel processing/fabrication
routes in order to obtain better material properties in terms of
both physical as well as the biological performance. In the
above context, an Indo-US joint center on Biomaterials for
health care has been established with the funding from
Indo-US Science and Technology forum
(http://www.indousstf.org/). This center is currently the
largest of all such center in terms of the total number of
institutes/principal investigators involved in center
activities. The nodal institute of this center is Indian
Institute technology Kanpur. The nodal co-ordinator is Prof. S.
P. Mehrotra and the center co-ordiantors are Profs. Bikramjit
Basu (India) and Thormas Webster (USA).

The
center involves active researchers in the area of
Biomaterials. As part of this center, the leading researchers
from two academic institutions and two R & D labs will
participate from Indian side. From USA side, researchers from
three reputed academic institutes and one private industry
will participate. In addition, one US based private industry,
one Indian private industry and one Indian R & D institute
provide full support to the proposed center. The overall
objective of the proposed center is to combine the cutting
edge technologies of fabrication and testing of materials
science with the knowledge of biological sciences in order to
come up with strategies to develop shaped implant materials in
some of the emerging material systems for the purpose of the
enhancement of public health. The proposed center will attempt
to demonstrate the synergistic flow and utilization of
scientific concepts, technological ideas and expertise in an
international team of recognized scientists. Each of the team
members is capable of executing cutting edge research in their
own field, however, to bring such an interdisciplinary
research project to fruition we need to utilize and merge the
capabilities of each group to the fullest. The focused
activities for the center would be in the following areas: (a)
Metals, ceramics and polymer based hard tissue replacement
(orthopedic implant) materials, with particular emphasis on
Nanobiomaterials; (b) Polymer based scaffold materials for
tissue engineering application and (c) Formulating strategies
based on novel manufacturing routes to Produce complex shaped
implant materials